08.05.09
Peace
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).
Things are tough in the world, there can be no denying that. Perhaps not for us specifically, but for many. many of our fellow citizens, not only in South Africa but all over the world. Those of us who keep up with the news from all over cannot hear or read about it without being moved, and being moved, we experience that tribulation in our own souls (it is not only the offence of the gospel that the Lord speaks of). And yet our Lord gives us His peace, and wants us to live in it even while we see the suffering of others and the plight of the very poor all around us, even when we desperately want things to change, to change so that all have safe environments to live in and enough of what is needed each day as in the days of the manna from heaven. It is part of our growth in faith and trust in God — a requirement of our life’s journey — that we learn to honour Him by simply accepting those things we cannot change and then live on in that peace He gives us, understanding that He has overcome the world – knowing that in the end all will come right.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27).
Grace, mercy and peace to you all.
Jessop.
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01.12.09
Peace beyond all peace.
Jesus makes this interesting statement — “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
I am reading a book at the moment outlining the development of man in his search for God, particularly during the thousand-year period immediately before Christ. What all the sages were looking for was how to align man’s life here on earth with the way of life in heaven, believing that that manner of life would lead to a certain perfection of soul and peace for the individual, and for the world.
As the baton passed from thinker to thinker, from sage to sage, down the years the search moved away from consideration of sacrifices and rituals and became an inner search which eventually distilled into a simple concept — lose your ego, your concentration on self, and substitute for it a love for your fellow-man (and creation generally) and you will find peace. That, of course, is logically accurate — when you stop thinking that your own life is the most important thing in the world for you to hold on to, then you will have lost that vaguely-felt fear of life, and you will have an inner peace even in the midst of this very turbulent world we live in.
The idea is undeniably correct. It not unlike what Jesus told his disciples to pray for in the words “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven”. Both start with the individual but there is a difference. The first way requires that you do it for yourself. The second way, the way that Christ spells out, recognises that it is something only God can do. The desired outcome is the same — when we on earth know how to live as the inhabitants of heaven live, then we will be at rest, and the world will be at rest.
That peace is just what the majority of us desire so much, but the first way, the way of the world, the way of doing it for ourselves, the way which is natural for us to want to try, is so difficult because of a nagging conscience — Will my best efforts merit for me a place in the afterlife if there is an after life? A writer of a book in the New Testament, speaking of what Jesus is able to do, puts it like this: “And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
Through faithful meditation some sages do claim to have reach a state in which they experienced love for all things outside of themselves, a state which brought a of great happiness. For some it may have taken them calmly through death. The Greek philosopher Socrates most certainly went happily and almost eagerly to his state-administered death sentence by poisoning. He was confident that through death he was passing to a better life.
That philosophy may have succeeded for the few, but the majority of us need some inspiration from outside of ourselves that will change the way we think about life and death. That is in the package that Jesus brings to us — ” Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
It is a gift. We can only accept it as graciously as it is offered. Peace in the heart is a gift from God through Jesus. It can’t be obtained by effort because effort itself disquiets one. It is gift. Another writer of a book in the New Testament says: “The word is near you, even in your mouth, and in your heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.”
Do it and you will find Jesus and you will be saved. You will find the peace you are looking for. You will find it in him.
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You can email me at <jessopsutton@vodamail.co.za> and I will answer your questions.
Jessop.
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01.03.09
The Singer in the Street.
I once had a remarkable dream. I will tell it to you but so that there is nothing hidden, I will at the outset tell you that it is about Jesus who fills so much of my thought. Specifically, I would have probably been thinking about how difficult it is to get others to stop and think about it and take to heart the thing that gives me such great happiness in life — a confident relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I worry that so many people I have told about this great thing either walk away as soon as they realise it is about God; or they listen for a while and seem to be sympathetic, smile and then go on their way; or they look as if they are about to make the decision that will bring so much joy into their lives but then go away sorrowfully because they are afraid of losing somethings they hold onto, or they are afraid about what their friends will say. It worries me, but I keep on doing it because every now and then a person does accept the message and takes Jesus at his word. Jesus says that, at such times, the Angels in heaven rejoice — and, frankly, I share in that joy.
But the dream. Here it is exactly as I wrote it down in my journal.
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17 – 7 – 80
I dreamt last night about the Singer. He stopped me in the street and asked for a gift, he was a Singer and was waiting for his next song. He was black, he had on a white shirt (only) and black trousers. I looked at him and turned away. He ran on (he was running urgently). I later repented and wanted to help. I went after him and followed him downhill in an arcade. At the bottom he disappeared; I didn’t see which way he turned and I lost him in the crowd. At the end of the next street, I ran into a parade and a circus but I did not find the Singer. Then I went back up the hill.
When I awoke, I remembered that his clothes were old but clean, his eyes were clear & white, he had that urgent look in his eyes. I should have helped, now it was too late — I would never be able to help the Singer as he produces his next song. His face was – - – - clean and his hair was clean and neatly groomed.
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That was the dream. You may be able to read different things into it but to me it meant variously:
- you are given an opportunity, if you don’t tale it it is gone. You may not have another.
- if you do take one like this one, you will have the pleasure of helping the Singer to produce his next beautiful song.
- to me it means that the gift I bring to him is you coming to him.
- to you I would like it means that, if you are the one he stops in the street, it is your opportunity to give yourself to him.
Here I can do no better than to give you the familiar words that you have probably heard many times before today: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.
We don’t have to fully understand what it is to perish or what it is to have ever lasting life. All we need to hear is that in these words it is God coming to you with love in his heart to bring to you the gift surpassing all gifts that you will ever have received before in your life, or will ever receive in your future — life of a new, good quality such as you have never known.
A simple prayer this day will bring it to you. “Lord Jesus, you are the Singer and I make to you the gift of my life. Take it and turn it into a new song for you and for me”.
[If you are the one who has heard his voice today and responded to him, send me an e-mail and I will help you further along the way --
<jessopsutton@vodamail.co.za> ]
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12.23.08
It happened to me, it can happen to you.
This great thing that happened to me came as a surprise. It was nothing which I would have expected but it came at a time when I was open to it. Jesus once said, quite logically, that those who are not sick do not need a doctor. The doctor’s services are for one who is sick and knows that she (or he) is sick. The implication is that, in order to meet up with God in the way I describe it, there has to be a felt want, a feeling of something lacking. In this case it is not something missing in physical health but in spiritual well being. I suppose one could say that it is psychological not physical, an unease in the mind.
I say it ‘happened’ to me and there is really no other way to describe it that that it happened. When it happens to you, it will be, if you but know it, that God has been ‘looking’ for you. Jesus once described it in this way: “The wind blows where it desires, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell from where it comes or where it goes; so is every one that is born of the Spirit”. The Spirit of God is in the earth looking for anyone who is ready to hear his voice. That is a person who is ‘hungry’ for something he or she senses to be missing. If today is your day, that is the time you will respond as I did. (It may not be your turn today but the Spirit can return to you at anytime when you are ready to ‘hear’ it).
God will be calling you. Something will switch on that yearning in your soul. It may be an event, or a word spoken by a friend, or a message you hear on the radio, or something you read for yourself in the Bible, or perhaps a reading in church one morning — anything, but the yearning will rise in you. Many miss the opportunity because they don’t know recognise the moment or how to react to it. That is what I am telling you today — how to handle the moment. You handle it as I did with a simple prayer to God. I mean a simple prayer, nothing complicated about it.
Okay — what is prayer? No, it’s not getting on your knees, closing your eyes and repeating words from a prayer book. That is prayer, but that is not what you need today as you read this. Prayer is simply talking to God. You cannot see him next to you, but he is there and waiting for you to speak. What he wants to hear from your lips, in your own sincere words, is something like:
“Father in heaven, I have come to you because I need you. Please hear me and forgive me for being far away from you in my own mind. Come into my heart and my life and stay there with me for ever. I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, my Saviour.”
It can be simpler even than that. What it says to God is that you believe he exists, that he is near to hear you, that he is ready to receive you into his presence because of what Jesus has done for you in giving his own life to put your life right with God.
A last word from the Bible for you:
“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that hears say, Come. And let him that is thirsty come; and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.” (From the Revelation of John, chapter 22, verse 17).
Today, if it has happened to you as it happened to me, you can email me and I will help you further: jessopsutton@vodamail.co.za
Jessop.
12.15.08
God, yes — but why Jesus?
For many people of other faiths, or of no faith, this is an obvious question. It was a question for me, coming as I did in that one instant from no faith to belief in God. I could have gone in any direction after discovering that there is God, and he is there. But my wife is a Christian so it was natural to go across the road at lunchtime to a Christian bookshop and buy a pocket edition of The Gospel According to Mark. I started about Jesus.
I had asked to be forgiven and I ended up with this sense of being forgiven, but for given for what? Was it just for my lifelong arrogant refusal to believe even that God existed?
I soon perceived that it was more than that. I had this sense of peace and yet I was now more conscious than ever before of my little wrong action, of my ethical and moral failures, of my weaknesses as a human being, of my fears. Not that I had ever thought myself to be any worse, or even as bad, as the next man — in fact I would have considered myself a fairly decent sort of person — but I now felt that I had been missing the mark somewhere.
Conscious of wrong and yet forgiven. How and why?
The normal human thing is to think that ‘I must make amends’ to whomever the offence has been committed before forgiveness can come. But in this case the offence is against life itself, a violation of what I as a human being should be.
You will understand that I did not work this out immediately. It unfolded gradually as my understanding of God grew. The immediate question was still Why? The error is in missing the mark, coming short of the standard for ethical and moral behaviour intended for human life. The offence is against God. But now, with no amends having been made, no sacrifice other than a certain act of humility “I have been a fool, forgive me”, only that and forgiveness was there.
A friend, a minister in a church, helped me with a simple question and it’s answer — “Jessop, do you know about the Christian understanding of the forgiveness of sins through the Lord Jesus Christ?”.
Sin! –there’s another one of those words from which some of us recoil! — Sin? Me? — but it falls into place when the word is explained as translating a Greek word meaning ‘a missing of the mark’, as in when an arrow is let loose and and goes wide of the target. That, of course, was my life as I describe it above — like a stray arrow, my life was missing the mark.
Now the connection was made — “God, yes — but why Jesus?”
My friend explained it — Christ had died for the forgiveness of every soul born into the world. The catch is that, in order to experience it, each person must ask and accept it for him- or herself. I had done that. It became known when I asked — “Forgive me, I have been foolish”. It was not forced upon me — that would be in violation of my freewill.
Like that spring I told you about, the spring on a hill in the desert from which flows water that is ice cold on the hottest day, I knew the truth of forgiveness only when I accepted it.I had been to the spring and drank of the water of forgiveness. The transaction took place somewhere in me where spiritual meets physical. Then the feeling followed.
As the man says, “The trouble with Christianity is that you can’t know if it is true before you believe”.
Yes — that is a problem.
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12.12.08
Are you saved? That word again —- !
Are you saved? That word again —- !
What Jesus brought to the world is something wonderful but so hard to convey in everyday language. When the language of the gospel — which means ‘good news’ — is used, some people are touched by it while others recoil.
So let me tell you what happened to me and maybe it will help.
I was a sort of atheistic, communistic, nihilistic unbeliever until age thirty. But I was confused about life which seemed sort of meaningless.
Then JF Kennedy, President of the United States, got shot by an assassin in November 1963. I read in the paper on the way to world the next day that he believed in God. The paper quoted two of his favourite verses from the Bible which he had on his desk. The verses were encouraging to anyone who believes in God.
I was on the sales floor of the shop in which I was a manager-in-training having recently made a career change. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Life seemed tough. Outwardly I seemed okay to anyone else but inwardly I was an unsure type, nervous of those with authority over me, with little confidence in my ability to do anything.
Then it occurred to me that the President of the United States sort of got help from God. So I stood there and said softly “God, I am a foolish man, a nobody and I don’t believe in you while President Kennedy, the world’s most important man does and prays to you. Forgive me.”
When I said that I immediately felt a change take place in me, in my thinking, in my inner feelings, a release from something — a sort of surge of happiness.
But why? I worked out later that what had happened was that I had surrendered, given up a fight, an antagonistic attitude, admitted that I was, after all, not the king of my universe, but someone else was!
I had asked him to forgive me and I felt forgiven for something or other.
But why should he forgive me, and for what, and how could I be sure?
Ah! — I found out later that that is what Jesus is all about, Jesus who was born in Bethlehem ‘on Christmas Day’.
12.07.08
You can’t ‘know’ before you believe!
Browsing in a bookshop one day I saw a book about Christianity on the back cover of which was this quote from the book “The trouble with Christianity is that you can’t know if it is true before you believe”. The purpose of the writer (I think — I didn’t buy the book at the time) was to debunk faith in Christ.
The question that came instantly to mind was, “Why not take the step, believe, and then know if it is true or not?” Seems logical to me. It reminded me of a little story someone once told: “There is a spring of water on a hill in the Kalahari Desert. On the hottest day, the water is always ice cold. I know because I have been there and put my feet in it. It is as cold as they say.”
Ya — that is the thing. Those who have put their feet in the water certainly know without a doubt — Christ is real enough and what he says can be trusted,
